


Cast Iron

by yuletide_archivist



Category: Christian Bible (Old Testament), תנ"ך | Tanakh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-25
Updated: 2008-12-25
Packaged: 2018-01-25 08:27:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 767
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1641416
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Story by zarnitsa</p><p>He was not yet a man, but no longer a boy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cast Iron

**Author's Note:**

> Dear Roga, wish you a peaceful holiday season and a better new year to come.  
> Thank you, Y., for keeping faith and being there.
> 
> Written for Roga

 

 

_Now there was no smith found throughout all the land of Israel: for the Philistines said, Lest the Hebrews make them swords and spears. ¡V 1 Samuel 13:19 ___

Every morning, when the first ray of light reached his feet, the man would roughly shake awake the boy beside him. He would then sit up and watch the boy twitch beneath the blue mantle, nightly spread out to serve as their bedding. The youth always woke in degrees: First the lax fingers would tighten around the edge of the garment, fumbling for his sling, only when they found it and got hold of the handle would they slowly, deliberately, relax. 

Before the land was awash with daylight, they would decamp. The man shouldered up his sword and tools, and the boy his own bundle, and they continued on to the next city.

When they entered a city, he would find the local blacksmith¡¦s hut, the privileged ventures scattered far and between under the Philistine rule, and ask for work. Sometimes the shop owner would be pleased to have a skilled helper. When the owner they encountered was less cooperative, he would loom and stare down the shop owner¡¦s ever weakening sneer, and the boy would chatter up a storm, pleading and charming by turns ¡¥til the agape onlookers¡¦ ears fell off. They worked well together, and they never stayed in a town long enough to outstay their reluctant welcome.

It was better than looting in any case, he figured.

Only at the beginning had he blindfolded the boy when he began to work on the iron, but later, when the boy began to help the owners¡¦ mistresses and maidservants for meals and household chores, he found it unnecessary, as women tended to flock to him, pinching his ruddy cheeks and ruffled his curls, essentially spiriting the youth away before he could peek in and get hold of the secrets of ironwork. 

Despite the initial intimidation, always, the wary townsfolk would trickle in, bringing to them their shares, their coulters, their axes, their rust-crusted mattocks for a file. While he worked, the boy puttered around, cleaned the furnace and picked up the scrap metals to throw in the pile to be melted later. At the midday, he brought in parched corns and fig cakes prepared by the women, and they would sit down and eat. At night, the boy would let the man march him outside of the town into the wilderness, where they sleep wrapped inside the mantle, side by side.

After a day¡¦s work, the man gathered up spare metals and fused them together to make a brass whistle. He brought it to the boy at nightfall. From then on, the boy wore it every day, trying out sounds and tunes that made the household bewildered and bewitched. When the man hammered down the melted ore during the day, he would hear the boy, temporarily blind, whistling in the semi-darkness.

Over the past twenty days, the boy had ceased trying to escape from him.

It was easy to tell what the boy was thinking from the way he wrinkled his nose and frowned, the way he tapped his left foot. He was still young, impatiently so, and mindless of his surroundings when he was making songs in his head. The day the man snatched the boy away upon the sheep and the slope, the boy was humming also, all alone. When the boy turned his back to watch a bird fluttering its wing, he walked up to him and struck, plucking him off like he would a sheave of corn.

When the boy came to in a cave far away from the familiar hills, the man pressed his gnarled fingers to his throat and said, Thou wilt follow and obey me. Thou wilt mend thy kinsmen¡¦s sins, who hath deprived me of my wife and son.

Even if thou smite me, thy wife and son will never be returned to thee, said the boy.

And yet I shall gain a son and thy father shall mourn for thee.

No he shan¡¦t. He hath sons enough to spare, the boy said and refused to speak to him from then on, until they arrived at town and began to find their lodgings of the night, the first of many.

But those were in the past, the days fleeting away like the pebbles skipping over the brook, when they crossed the Nahal Sorek. He was describing the coastline of the Great Sea that the boy had been asking about, when they were ambushed by 

 


End file.
